


Predictable Outcomes

by Miri1984



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), avengers endgame - Fandom
Genre: Avengers Endgame Spoilers, Gen, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 16:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18626749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: Steve and Bucky have a chat before Steve's last mission.





	Predictable Outcomes

“I’m not coming back, Buck,” Steve says and Bucky doesn’t even give him the decency of looking surprised.

“I figured.” Bucy is eating something processed out of a packet, it looks like chips or cheese or some sort of combination of the two. Steve hasn’t even tried to keep track of all the different junk foods available since he woke up but it gives him an obscure pleasure to watch Bucky eat everything and anything he can find that isn’t a fruit or a vegetable.

Some things never change, it’s just that these days his friend has far more choice.

“You gonna tell the others?” Bucky asks.

“Tony would have known,” Steve says. “Nat too, probably.” He sees Bucky’s face shadow at the mention of Natasha. They’ve talked about it. Talked about a lot of things over the past few weeks and Steve wouldn’t have made the decision he’s making if he thought Bucky still needed him here.

Tony probably would have insisted that he was the one who should take the stones back. Bruce couldn’t -- obviously -- Sam and Okoye had pointed out how great a reception they’d get if they tried rocking up anywhere other than right now and Carol had other duties. There was no way they were taking Clint or Scott away from their families again and Thor wasn’t great at staying in the background. 

It had landed on Steve quite conveniently, really, and only Bucky had noticed the hitch in his breath when they’d discussed it.

“You can come with me,” Steve says, “if you want.”

Bucky snorts and waves his metal arm in Steve’s face. “Don’t think the forties are ready for this, buddy. And any way, why would I want to leave the future? It’s better here, Steve, you know that.” Steve swallows and Bucky purses his lips. “You’re sure you won’t stuff it all up, if you go back and change things?”

“I thought you listened when Bruce explained it,” Steve says. “It’s not our past I’m going back to. Our past is set. This’ll be… something new. Something different.”

“Something you can shape the way you want it,” Bucky says.

Steve nods. There’s so much he can do to make that world better. 

“What about other you? The one in the ice?”

“I never expected to come out of that,” Steve says. “And I can’t save everyone. Any way he’ll be fine when he wakes up. If he wakes up. There’ll be people he’ll learn to love, just like I did.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say, Steve,” Bucky says. “And you’re being a jerk to yourself. Going back in time, stealing your own girl? Not something I’d expected from Captain America.”

Steve smirks. “I think I’ll understand,” he says.

“Well you won’t have a chance, will you, stuck in ice like that.”   
“It’s just a pity we don’t have the technology to get me out in the forties without killing me,” Steve says, shrugging. 

Bucky shoved him in the shoulder. “You know I get it now,” he said.

“What?”

“Why 2012 you immediately decided to punch this you in your dumb face.”

“How do you know I didn’t punch him first?”

Bucky just looks at him and Steve smirks.

“You know, someone should probably put on the uniform, when I’m gone,” he says. “Now that Tony’s gone.”

“Carol’s red-white and blue enough,” Bucky says, shrugging. “And she’s already a Captain. A legitimate one too, not like some other punk I know.”

Steve raises his eyebrow. “Carol has other places to be. Captain America - he deals with earth. He leads the Avengers.”

“Steve I’m not going to be Captain America,” Bucky says. “I’m not that guy. I’m not the one who leads.”

Steve looks at his friend. He’s whole, these days, in a way he hasn’t been since Azzano. He’s found a place. And he knows his own mind better than anyone. “Someone needs to take the shield, Buck,” he says. 

Bucky laughs. “Well you know full well who’d be best at it, you just want me to say it.”

“I would have felt bad if I’d offered it to Sam before I offered it to you.”

“You knew I’d say no, though.”

“There is that.”

Bucky laughs again and it feels like eighty years ago. It feels like everything they could have been. 

Would be.

“Say hi to them for me,” Bucky says, then, and Steve knows he doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. If things go right, and they will, Bucky will be there with him. 

It won’t be this Bucky though.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you,” Steve says. 

“We’ve been over that,” Bucky says. “Just make sure you’re there for him instead, huh?”

They make their way down to where Bruce and Sam are waiting, by the new tunnel, shoulder to shoulder for the last time.

At least in this reality.

“I will.” Steve says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> You know they talked about this before he went. It's bloody obvious.


End file.
